


The Truest Believer

by unfolded73



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Implied Captain Hook | Killian Jones/Emma Swan, Implied Captain Hook | Killian Jones/Milah, Step-parents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-23
Updated: 2017-07-23
Packaged: 2018-12-06 01:10:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11589921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unfolded73/pseuds/unfolded73
Summary: Killian and Henry discuss the nature of true love.





	The Truest Believer

**Author's Note:**

  * For [just_another_classic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/just_another_classic/gifts).



> Prompt from @justanotherwannabeclassic: “Killian talking to Henry about Milah and Bae.” Spoilers only for the way 7x01 is going to start.

Killian stepped out on the back porch and handed Henry one of the two beers he was carrying. “Don’t tell your mother.”

Henry rolled his eyes. “I’m eighteen; she won’t care.”

“Still.” Killian sat down in one of the rocking chairs and took a swig from his bottle. “Just to be on the safe side.”

The evening was wearing on, the late summer air heavy with humidity, wringing the energy out of anyone who dared to spend too much time out in it. The constant, throbbing whine of cicadas filled the space around them, making it easy to sit together in silence.

Henry finally moved from his position leaning against the porch railing, and sat down in the other rocking chair next to Killian. “Is she angry with me?”

“For leaving? No, she’s not angry. She’s sad, and she’ll miss you terribly.”

Henry gave him a skeptical glance. “She seems angry.”

“There’s a part of Emma that wants to hold all of her family together in the same place, because she went so many years without any family. But she does understand why you need to do this.” He took a long drink from his beer. “I’ll miss you too, you know.”

“Ugh, Killian, don’t get mushy.”

“I’m your stepfather, I’m allowed to get a little bit sentimental.”

“Fine, fine.” Henry laughed and took a drink from his beer bottle. They sat still for a while, listening to the cicadas, and underneath, the drone of a distant lawn mower and the occasional whoosh of a car going by on the street. “I’ve spent a lot of my life deluding myself with the idea that finding true love is inevitable. It seemed so easy for everyone in my life, growing up. But it’s such an enormous world out there, with realms upon realms stacked together like books on a shelf, and I realized that my true love is probably out there, and the odds of me finding her are astronomically small unless the fates intervene. I’m hoping they do.”

“I’m not sure it always works like that.” Killian tapped his hook on his knee absently. “I mean, maybe sometimes it does, but I think true love isn’t always something that’s found. Sometimes I think it’s made.”

Henry considered that. “Do you think that’s the way it was with you and Mom?”

“Aye. Do you remember when Snow and Charming found that little tree that had grown from the spark of their love? Apparently they didn’t even have to see each other, didn’t know each other at all. Their hands touched, and it was literally magic.”

“And you don’t think it happened that way for the Swan-Joneses?” Henry said, peeling at the label on his beer bottle.

Killian chuckled. “I mean, I don’t know, there could be a little baby tree thing for us out there somewhere. But something tells me there isn’t, at least not from our first meeting. I think we built our love, brick by brick. And it was work, but it’s no less true for all that.”

“Okay, fine, but what’s your point?”

“My point, Henry, is there may not be one true love out there for you. There may be lots of potential true loves, and it’s up to you and your eventual partner to build your relationship into something true.”

Henry ran a hand through his hair. “So, what, you think if Prince Charming had come across some other princess under a sleeping curse, then he’d have had true love with her and none of us would be here? I don’t know whether to be comforted by that or terrified.”

“I can’t speak for Snow White and Prince Charming; they may be a special case. I can say that I loved someone hundreds of years ago, and could have spent a lifetime with her, and yet that doesn’t make what I share with your mother any less true. I love Emma with every fiber of my being, but I once felt that way for Milah. Neither negates the other. If there was more than one person in the world that I could love that much, then I don’t think you need to be so afraid of not finding love.” He picked at a small hole in his jeans with the tip of his hook. “Perhaps true love isn’t really as rare as people like to say it is.”

“What was it like when you met my grandmother?” Henry asked.

Killian looked at him with a furrowed brow. “When I met Snow?”

“Us having a fucked-up family tree is no excuse for forgetting that Milah was my other grandmother.”

Killian grimaced. “I didn’t forget, I just… why would you want to hear that story?”

Henry shrugged, thinking about all of the storybooks in the sorcerer’s house he’d been studying lately. “I’ve been thinking a lot about what happens when people who are destined to fall in love meet. It’s such a common literary trope, from fairy tales to Jane Austen to Hugh Grant movies. Consider it authorial research.”

Killian hesitated. “And you want to hear about Milah and not, you know, Emma?”

“I know the story about how you and Mom met. You pretending to be a lowly blacksmith, her seeing through your lies and threatening to leave you for the ogres if you didn’t admit who you really were, the beanstalk, all of it. I’ve heard it a million times.” He wondered if the alcohol was already loosening his tongue, to be asking his mother’s husband about the woman he loved first. “I want to hear a story you’ve never told me before.”

Getting his rocking chair in motion, Killian looked up at the ceiling of the porch. “All right, let’s see. We’d brought the _Jolly Roger_ into a port where we tended to stop frequently, as it was small and out of the way and rarely had any law enforcement around to cause us trouble. It was a bit of a lawless place; the economy there had been hit particularly hard by the ogre wars, and black markets of all kinds had taken root and flourished.”

“This is a super romantic story so far,” Henry said sarcastically.

“I’m just setting the scene, lad. There was a tavern I favored, and I was there that night with a few of my crew while we looked for a buyer for… oh, I don’t remember anymore. Whatever cargo we’d most recently stolen off of a wealthy merchant ship or naval vessel. The innkeeper was the type who didn’t care where your money came from as long as you had it, and he never blinked an eye at pirates. 

“I suppose if this were a proper love story, I’d say I immediately noticed Milah across a crowded room. But in all honesty, I have no idea how long she’d been sitting there before I came upon her being assaulted by another shady character who had spilled a drink on her.”

“What did you do?” Henry asked.

“What any man with a death-wish and a high opinion of his own chivalry would do. I punched the guy and knocked him out.”

Henry laughed. “And he was bigger than you, I bet.”

“Oh, easily a foot taller and outweighed me by at least four stone, if memory serves.” Killian winked. “Anyway, I sat down at the lady’s table and offered her a drink to replace the one that oaf had spilled. There was nothing flashy about her. She was attractive but no legendary beauty, her clothes were modest and simple, her manner was timid. But I looked into her eyes and I knew.”

“That you loved her?”

Killian’s lips quirked up in a half-smile and he looked down. “I knew that I needed to know her.”

“So you seduced her onto your ship?”

“No, not at first. We talked, and she seemed fascinated by the idea of traveling the world. But she told me she had a husband and child, and I took my leave of her.”

Henry was surprised to hear that. He’d always imagined that Milah leaving his father as a boy had happened in one single whirlwind, an impulsive decision made in the heat of passion. This made it sound more premeditated.

“I returned to that port as often as I could over the next few months, and I sought her out. At first I hated myself a little bit for that, but I couldn’t forget her. And soon I learned that she was desperately unhappy in her marriage, so much so that she’d once contemplated ending her own life.”

“Oh. Wow.”

“Not that it excuses what we did, mind you. Your father suffered deeply for losing his mother, and I take responsibility for that. But Milah was miserable, and all I could think about was taking her away from the life that was killing her. 

“It wasn’t the kind of story that people write epic romances about, but I loved her very much, and she the same for me.” He finished off his beer and set the bottle down on the floor. “And we did intend to take Bae with us as soon as he was old enough. Had she lived, I believe we would have.”

“It sounds like if anything was predestined, it was for you to be someone’s stepfather,” Henry said with a smile, but it made his heart full, the fact that Killian never seemed to love him any less for being another man’s child, and that long ago he’d felt the same way for Henry’s own father.

“Perhaps that’s so.”

Henry looked out over the neatly mown grass, and thought about the afternoons of yard work he’d helped with, and all the hours of sword fighting practice he’d put in behind this house. “You know you’re more than just…” He cringed internally at his own raw emotions. “I mean, I hope you know that stepfather doesn’t… it doesn’t cover what you’ve been the last few years. To me. You’ve been like a… you’ve been a father.”

Henry avoided looking over at Killian, focusing hard on the drops of condensation collecting on his beer bottle. “Now who’s getting mushy,” Killian said after a pause, his voice suspiciously raspy.

Silence settled over them again. Henry heard the clatter of dishes in the kitchen, the sound of his mother putting things away. It was so achingly familiar, and for a moment he wanted to take everything back. How could he leave his family? How would he stand the loneliness, when he’d grown so used to being surrounded by people who loved him?

But then he remembered the way Storybrooke had started to feel oppressive, how it felt like walls closing in on him sometimes. His life was here, but he had an unshakable sense that it was also out there, somewhere. His destiny.

“You know that if you ever need anything, Henry, all you have to do is contact us,” Killian said. 

“I know.” Henry swallowed around a lump in his throat.

“And if you do meet your true love out there, son, then I’m very much looking forward to meeting her.”

Henry laughed uneasily. “So that you can see if she meets with your approval?”

“With mothers like Regina and Emma, I think I’m the least of her worries.”

“Oh, God. What am I getting myself into?” He tilted his beer up to finish it.

“Life, my boy.” He clapped Henry on the shoulder. “And a wonderful life it will be.”

“You believe that?”

Killian raised an eyebrow. “You’re the truest believer. You tell me. Do you believe it?”

Henry nodded, smiling. “I do.”


End file.
